what it’s ACTUALLY like to work at FAANG... (Facebook/Meta, Amazon, Netflix, Google, Apple)

better help thank you for sponsoring today's video hey guys how's it going welcome back to another video so this video was inspired by mayuko's awesome video of why people want to work at fang or manga as people call it these days she interviewed a bunch of people and asked them why they wanted to work at manga and found three big reasons the first one is the pay and the perks the second one is prestige and the third one is caliber i thought this was pretty interesting and i also did my own poll and we have around like 10k responses now asking you guys why you wanted to work at manga i also included the option of i don't want to work at manga and the results of that the comments below are pretty interesting and some of them i completely agree with but maybe that's a topic for another video but in this video i wanted to expand and build a little bit more upon myuco's findings and also offer an internal perspective as well from a data science perspective since i work as a data scientist in one of these manga companies so for each of these reasons pain perks prestige and caliber i'm gonna talk a little bit about each of them and what it's actually like to experience them whether i think the reason is valid or not and some caveats do stay until the very end of this video as well because i'm gonna address one more big thing that i feel like manga hopefuls don't really consider that much but it is really important if not the most important thing and it's also the biggest reason why people keep leaving fun fact did you know that the average duration of people who work at these manga companies is less than two years one more note before we get started i just want to put the caveat that this is super subjective it's really based upon my own experiences my colleagues and the people that i've talked to i also link myuco's video below which is excellent if you haven't checked it out and she is much more objective okay so first let's talk

about pay and perks as many of you guys probably already know one of the biggest drawing points for people want to work in manga is because of the pay and the perks both for technical fields if you're like a software engineer or a data scientist or a data engineer as well as non-technical fields like product managers ux researchers designers etc i'm definitely the most knowledgeable about technical fields such as data science and software engineering and i can confirm that these starting salaries coming out of school directly is in the six figures especially if you're living in bigger cities such as new york or san francisco the bay area plus it increases dramatically as you move out of this like entry level status and you become more senior i don't know if i can reveal exact numbers because probably somewhere in my 20 page contract it says that i cannot reveal um exact numbers but you can look up on websites like blind and you can see how much people get paid and how much more people get paid as they become more senior so stocks are actually really important because a large part of the money that you get paid is through stocks and sometimes the amount that you're getting paid is at the same level as your base salary or even above it you also usually get a wellness benefit um in which you get a certain amount of money that's allocated for you specifically to invest in your wellness such as a gym membership or like exercise equipment things like that and during the pandemic because of the whole work from home situation a lot of people also received additional fund so that they can kind of like deck how their work from home offices so they're more comfortable and are more productive there's also things related to parent care and parenting you receive really generous both paternity leave and maternally leave also you have very generous pay time off pto um unlimited sick days like actually unlimited sick days unlike some other industries where you have like technically unlimited sick days very convenient transportation and the very highly touted tooted thing which is free food although during the pandemic you really didn't get to experience that but that is a really big perk i do want to point out another really big perk specifically for people who are not american and they want to get a green card and eventually stay in the u. s there is a whole immigration team that's dedicated to helping you get through the immigration process and try to figure out the best strategies for you to get a green card some of these places not going to name any names may have had some issues on the immigration front but in general working on one of these manga companies is probably your fastest way of getting a green card so to answer the question is the pay and perks a valid reason for going into manga the answer is very much yes which is also reflected by the 44 percent on the poll all right let's take a moment now to talk about our sponsor today better help is the world's largest therapy platform with a 20 000 plus therapist network that provides services worldwide these therapists have a broad range of expertise and experiences that may not be locally available in many areas if there's something interfering with your happiness and preventing you from achieving your goals it's actually really smart to seek professional help especially if you work at really fast-paced environments like in manga big tech it's also extremely important to preemptively take care of yourself because trust me burnout sneaks up on you like shikamaru's shadow possession jutsu better help will access your needs and match you with your own licensed professional therapist and you can start communicating with them within 48 hours and it's also not like you only get to talk with them during official sessions you can log into your account and send a message to your therapist anytime and you'll get timely and thoughtful responses you can schedule weekly video or phone sessions or if you are scared of phones like me you can even do texting sessions you definitely do not need to sit in a uncomfortable waiting room awkwardly waiting for traditional therapy if you've tried therapy before you may know that it takes some trial and error for you to find the best therapist for you that's why betterhelp is also committed to facilitating great therapeutic matches so they make it easy and free to change therapists if needed it's more affordable than traditional therapy and they also offer financial aid better help wants you to start living a happier life today visit betterhelp. com tina hong that's better help h-e-l-p um also linked in descriptions and you can join over two million people taking charge of their mental health with the help of an experienced professional there's also a special offer to viewers of this channel where you can get 10 off your first month if you go to betterhelp. com tina hall okay back to the video i do want to address some of the caveats now let's start off with salary so for salary yes you are making a very decent amount of money but you also want to consider that you're probably also living in a place that have really high cost of living for example in the bay area this article says that to live comfortably you need an average salary of 6951 dollars per month which works out to be around 83 to 84 000 a year so if you take your salary get rid of the also very high personal income taxes you know maybe you're actually not making as much money as you thought i live in the bay area and my rent is two thousand seven hundred dollars not including like additional stuff like water gas or like internet and things like that and it's not like i live in some fancy place a one bedroom apartment um of a building that was built i think in like the 1950s and 60s literally the elevator is not even automated like you have to manually open the door to go into the elevator second caveat here lifestyle inflation is very real i have actually seen a lot of people who are more senior fall into this i don't know if you call like trap where they're like oh okay like i have a family now and i want to buy a house here right so they take out a mortgage and what they don't really factor in as much is that you are taking on a mortgage to buy a house in one of the most expensive places to live in the us and that basically chains you down to this area and to this job because now you have a really expensive mortgage and you need to pay that off so i think the takeaway is from here is that you should still think very carefully about how you're spending the money okay and now let's move on to some caveats about the

perks so the really cool stuff like the cool offices ping pong tables bikes and stuff and even the free food i think that can be really appealing especially if you're younger see i personally have never actually experienced that before because i started my job during the pandemic but from the people i've talked to you don't actually miss it as much as you think you would and another really interesting thing that i noticed while talking to people that i work with is that you become a lot more cognizant about the work that you're actually doing since you're not as distracted by all the perks so yes overall pain perks very valid reason for why you want to work at manga second reason that people is prestige

people want to work at manga is prestige i think prestige is an interesting one because it's not as tangible so let's actually define it first it's the widespread respect and admiration felt for someone or something on the basis of a perception of their achievements were quality so basically people respect and admire you more and that is true definitely people look at you differently after they find out that you work in one of the manga companies so in addition to the clout that you receive um this also has some pretty practical benefits like for example if you're finding a place to live um it's actually pretty hard these days during a pandemic to find a place to live to rent an apartment and by working in one of these companies you have a much higher chance of becoming accepted it's also linked to exit opportunities which i think people don't really think about as much but it's actually super important because if you have on your resume one of these manga companies you're almost guaranteed to at least get an interview at other companies and also if you want to do like your own thing to your startup or something by having like manga on your resume it does help a lot like i know a lot of people that have gotten accepted into top incubators and have gotten a lot of like venture capital and seed funding and they have told me that kind of having that manga title um they think did give them an advantage so do i think the prestige is worth it well i think the seven percent of people who want to come work at manga uh because of prestige that's pretty decent reflection of how much it matters but i do think that more than like five percent of people should have indicated that they wanted to work in manga for the exit opportunities now caveats so except for the things that we talked about earlier

that is much more practical um i think prestige is not super valid as a reason for you to go into manga because like the thing where people admire you and stuff it wears off really quickly so if you're coming to manga because you want to have more prestige just kind of be more sure that you want it for like a practical reason now the third reason that people talked about

why they want to work at manga caliber and in this case we're talking about the caliber of the people as well as kind of like the standards of the deliverables for the talent of people yes you will find that the people that you work with are going to be really smart and they're going to have really high standards and i mean just basically a lot of them are like super type 8 people and that kind of makes sense right because the interview process is pretty strenuous like you're going through multiple rounds with like five plus interviews five to seven interviews actually let me think one two three four five yeah i had seven rounds of interviews um to get my position so yeah the caliber of people uh that you made at manga is definitely hot from a technical perspective you're thinking about how to scale even greater and also from a non-technical perspective you're thinking about ethics and the stuff that you're creating how do you actually control these sorts of things right because you're working on stuff that nobody's ever seen before the caliber of your deliverables or your projects is also super high some companies also have what is called a up or out policy which is basically if you're not performing at a certain standard and you're not kind of being promoted at a certain speed then you are at risk of getting fired and from a data science perspective i've personally had my analyses and my models absolutely picked apart during reviews and just people asking me like this is great but so what like why does like why does this matter i definitely learned to step up my game really fast on the pull i thought about putting caliber as one of the options but i instead decided to call it like learning new things because i feel like the term caliber is kind of like difficult for people to understand what that means but yeah 13 of people wanted to work at manga so that they can learn new things so and i think this is quite valid um not surprised by the number of people who want to do that you'll definitely learn new things and it will also push you to step up your game um not just from the technical perspective but also how to work very efficiently in such a large company from a data science perspective i really learned how to hold my analyses to very stringent standards as well as how to present my analyses to business leaders to stakeholders in a way that clearly shows an understanding of the business and why the things that i do matter okay so let's talk about the caveat number one it is stressful and

for the companies that have that up or out model that's like really stressful and just to emphasize not all companies have this but just by the caliber of people around you know that in itself can be kind of stressful at times because you have to kind of like match those standards as well so if you do want to work in manga and like not be miserable i think you do genuinely have to intrinsically want to improve and want to get better the second copy i want to put here um which is more specific to learning new things is that a lot of the tooling in these companies is actually internal and this is for like a variety of reasons because you know they privacy and stuff they don't want to contract things out um and also because oftentimes the problems that they're working on that's just at that scale and that complexity they can't really contract that out so they have to build it internally so the reason why this is something to be careful about is because they are internal tools if you're not careful you could end up pigeonholing yourself to something that's very specific to that company especially since the company size is so large you might find yourself being pigeonholed to a very specific domain where like a very specific problem which can become a problem if you're ever looking to jump ship my advice here is to choose your team wisely try to choose a team that uses tooling that is more widespread in the industry now i want to talk about the big thing that manga hopefuls don't really consider that much even though it's extremely important and that is

work life balance i find a lot of people especially younger people when hearing about work-life balance they're just like eh you know i can work super hard i'm young you know like i managed to get through like super rigorous schooling and i'm a type a kind of person so in this section i want to expand more about what work-life balance actually means in practice and from an internal perspective like what it feels like as a data scientist where i work right now i have a lot of cross-functional partners which is people that i work with from many different roles so i'm a data scientist i work with software engineers i work with ux researchers product managers et cetera and you do need these different functions to be contributing so that whatever it is that you're building um is actually functioning correctly during the pandemic as many of you may know there was the great resignation which also impacted tech and the thing with data scientists is that we're often jack of all trades and it kind of makes sense because it's such an interdisciplinary field we know how to code do like product stuff and we also math and statistics right say your team is lacking a function like maybe you're missing a product manager data engineer where you're missing both what ends up happening is you end up stepping in for those roles and doing those things simply because you can and if you don't do it like who's gonna do it and then you pretty much find yourself working like one and a half jobs the imposter syndrome can be very intense sometimes so you have like this need to do better to work longer hours things like that i remember when this article came out people were kind of scoffing at the fact that people were leaving tech because they would finish a project and then they would be immediately given another project because of how high the caliber is and how difficult some of these problems are to solve you can't really like half-ass stuff like you really put it in your blood sweat and tears like you're you know using your brain cells to the maximum in order to get one of these products or projects done so that feeling like right after you complete a project and then you're still kind of like recuperating but then you immediately are given another project where you're putting in you know all that effort all that energy and all that time again it can be really generous and it's often led to burnout not to mention you sometimes find yourself in the position of working really hard on something but then finding out that you didn't actually have any impact like your project didn't amount to anything and this is quite common because in tech you're working at the cutting edge right so a lot of these low hanging fruits were really obvious things to do are already gone so you're working on things that are oftentimes pretty high risk pretty ambiguous and the chances of you failing even if you tried super hard is significant the repercussions of this it's not just like you feel really bad because you didn't have any impact it's also compounded by the fact that tech companies are generally very data driven this means that you can't really hide behind like writing a lot of code we're just doing a lot of work because what ultimately matters is how much impact that you have like how much impact you've had to the metrics that are considered to be important to the company and to your team this can be pretty disheartening um when performance review season comes up and you know you tried so hard but you know your review scores are really low because you didn't actually have any impact so yeah all these factors that i talked about earlier all lead to poor work life balance and the reason why this is really important is because work life balance leads to what is known as burnout a survey of 600 data engineers conducted by wakefield research found that 97 reported feeling burnt out with many citing relentless demands from employers repeated interruptions and disruptions of their work-life balance it will define projects and a steady stream of half-baked requests from stakeholders so pervasive were the feelings of burnt out among data engineers that 78 said they wish their job came with a therapist to help them manage stress which by the way many of them do yes the survey was data engineer specific but i would hypothesize that it's probably not that different among like product managers data scientists were like software engineers so yes tech burnout is extremely high and poor work life balance is a really big contributor to this if you're a manga hopeful i hope this section about work-life balance what

that can actually feel like and how it can lead to burnout really puts this more top of mind now in conclusion why do people want to work at manga and are they valid reasons and should you want to work among them i think it is worth it the pay in the perks is a really valid reason and wanting to learn new things and just like experience the caliber of people of technology of problems that you're solving is also going to force you to improve a lot and fast track your career you also get exposure to really smart people really driven people who are really inspirational and the exit opportunities themselves are often undervalued but really important if you ever want to do a startup or switch to another company and the caveats to this is that it can be quite stressful um you are likely to have poor work-life balance and that could lead to potentially you burning out my biggest two pieces of advice here is number one choose your team very wisely and number two think more long term about your career uh don't try to try really hard and end up having really bad work life balance and then end up burning out definitely also consider seeking professional help to prevent burnout from happening in the first place because from my experience it's just so not worth it all right that's all i have for you today thank you so much for watching and i'll see you guys in the next video we're live stream no grooming no grooming plan grooming's not too loud you